


a moment's rest

by lukrezius



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, i finished this at 3 am last night so let me know if there are any typos, i guess lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 08:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11733726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukrezius/pseuds/lukrezius
Summary: and Collins suddenly wonders, seeing windswept golden hair and clear, clear blue skies,  if he hadn't died and ascended to heaven without realising it.





	a moment's rest

The cold flush of panic grew and grew in Collins' stomach as he tried to wrench his canopy back again and again. He pressed it down, tampered down the flames of terror in his chest. Water swirled around his ankles. Think, he told himself, think. He cast around his rapidly filling cockpit. What could he use?

The flare gun. 

He grabs it, pulling it from its holder and smashing it into the hard canopy, ignoring how his frantic movements are causing the ocean to pour in faster. He is horrifyingly, terrifyingly aware of the sheer weight of the aircraft that he is stuck in. Regardless of how aerodynamic she was in the air, there was no denying how much Collins despised the useless hunk of metal and machinery in that moment. 

The gun slips from his hand, dropping into the icy water, now level with Collins’ chest. He swore, again and again under his breath, scrambling clumsily for it in the sea water around his feet. He finds it, loses it, finds it again, seizing it blindly from beneath his seat. He slammed it against the canopy again, movement hampered by the water that was almost at his ears, trickling past his collar and filling his uniform. 

His breaths were coming faster now, shallow and panicked. His fear overcame him, he slammed his hands against the clear acrylic, pressing upwards to suck in the last dregs of oxygen left in the cockpit, hands slowed by the sea. He’s muttering, he realises belatedly, begging incomprehensibly under his breath, aiming his feverish prayers at any divinity listening. Salt stings his eyes as he slips under, his ears filled with the dim vibrations of an engine. He thinks fondly, distantly, of Farrier. 

Then, suddenly, Collins realises that the engine he’s hearing doesn't belong to any kind of aircraft. At the same moment, a loud _crack_ echoed around the submerged cockpit, and Collins recoils, pressing himself down into his seat, looking upwards to see, blurred through the plastic and water, a stick smacking down on the canopy, cracking it, sending pieces of acrylic tumbling through the water.

He reaches for it, but the stick (a boat hook, his brain tells him), lifts away, and Collins’ lungs are burning, but he plants a foot on his seat and pushes himself up and out, his heels finding purchase on his throttle, his parking brake, the numerous dials on the dashboard of the cockpit. His head bursts from the water, he takes a gasping breath, eyes shut against the sudden chill of fresh sea air and breeze, and lets himself drop back, forcing his elbows out first, pulling his waterlogged torso out of the hole in the canopy. Fully submerged, his spitfire is sinking rapidly around him now, and he feels the water tugging him down in its wake. 

The boat hook flails in front of his face.

He squints, grabs it, meets the gaze of a boy leaning over the hull of a yacht. A young man, really, and long limbed and blue eyed, stretching out a line to save him from the deep blue waters of the Channel, and Collins suddenly wonders, seeing windswept golden hair, if he hadn't died and ascended to heaven without realising it. 

“Afternoon.” he gasped, breathless and half-drowned, but Collins was anything if not charming. A moment, a heartbeat passes, and the boat and the boy are silhouetted by the blinding sun, then another figure appears and hands are grabbing him by his shirt, his arms, the back of his life jacket. 

He meets them properly, the young man, Peter Dawson, and his father, and a quaking soldier with wild, icy eyes who almost immediately retreats to curl up in a corner of the cabin. Peter is nineteen, he learns, and he and his father have come to help, to rescue the men from the beaches of Dunkirk. Collins notices, with a grim sort of patriotic pride, the determined set of their faces when they tell him this. 

“Do you know first aid, sir?” Peter asks, tugging nervously at the red wool of his jumper. Both his father and the soldier glance up. Collins pulls the blanket around himself, and nods.

In the creaking, dim downstairs of the vessel, Collins stares down at the prone body of another young man. “What happened?” he asks, staring the bloodstained bandage around the boy’s head.

“I- he fell.” Peter said quietly, shoulders hunched.

Collins sighed. “I don't really know, son. You were right not to move him.” He cast eyes sideways, exhausted and drained, and very, incredibly, sick of all the death and destruction that this war was bringing. “You've done the best for him you can,” he added, seeing the young man’s furrowed brow and reddened eyes. 

On deck, he walks out of the cabin to survey the surrounding ocean. He hears voices talking behind him, but his eyes are raking the sky, looking for any hint of another spitfire.

Collins feels the air in his lungs vibrate with the sound of a huge boom. He follows Mr. Dawson’s gaze. A heinkel, having just dropped a bomb on the massive destroyer, shoots up and away, and Collins itches to be in the sky, burns to be up there fighting for his country, soaring alongside Farrier, protecting the men sitting like fish in a barrel in the water outside Dunkirk harbour. Farrier had never understood his attachment to his home country, had never had the same fire inside of himself to _belong_ to somewhere proudly.

 _An upbringing like mine,_ he’d muttered darkly, _you learn not to form attachments._

Collins had never found the time to ask him about his childhood again. He searches the sky again. 

“Dad, there's men in the water,” Peter shouts, pointing, and Collins follows his finger towards the black stained ocean, seeing hundreds of writhing figures furiously swimming to and from the sinking destroyer. A blue fishing trawler pitches onto its side as a familiar engine sounds overhead. All four of the men on the yacht tip their heads back as the spitfire passes overhead, in hot pursuit of the heinkel and her escort. 

“Come on, Farrier,” Collins breathed, watching him dodge tracer fire. 

“Come on!” shouted Peter, and Collins snaps out of his reverie, and joins him in dragging men from the water, their life jackets little more than pieces of cork wrapped in sacking.

“Oil!,” he shouts, “We’re getting into oil.” He hears the furious engines of Farrier’s spitfire, of Heinkels and 109s and ignores them, instead focusing on seizing men out of the water and shuttling them downstairs. The soldier, the one who had helped Peter pull Collins out of the water finally moved, joining him by the stern and reaching down to clasp the arms of desperate, oil slicked soldiers. 

Boats from home surround them, all filling up with blackened men. Fishermen and merchant navy and nurses and retired sailors, all rescuing their sons and brothers from certain death. “Come on Farrier,” Collins repeats, watching as the lone spitfire tries to strafe the bomber.

The blue trawler sinks, finally, the last few men pushing away from it and sliding into the oil covered water. Farrier banks hard, getting the Heinkel in his sights, presumably, as Collins hears him fire loud and hard at the enemy plane, and then he sees fire ripping through the air and he's shouting at Mr. Dawson, telling him to go, go, go, because he sees the oil and sees the flames. The yacht speeds up, banks hard left, and Collins is staring with horror as the men left in the water are engulfed by flames. Peter has a grip on a soldier, dragging him through the water, unable to pull him into the boat, unable to bring himself to let go.

Collins turns slowly, watches the single spitfire, containing one of the few people he cared about in the world, fly back towards Dunkirk. An eerie silence meets his ears, and he feels a curl of dread. He glances at his watch, coming to the grim realisation that there's no way Farrier will make it home. 

It's only when he places his first foot on english soil that he notices the tension resting on his shoulders. It disappears as he feels the solidity of England beneath his feet for the first time in what seems like days. He turns, staring through the inky darkness, a small part of him hoping that if he looks long enough, or hard enough, he’ll catch sight of Farrier soaring back over the channel to him. No luck. A land soldier spits at him, shouting, asking where the RAF were when Stukas were picking them off one by one from the desolate beaches of Dunkirk. Collins bit his lip. If only they knew. Mr. Dawson places a hand on his shoulder. Consoling. 

The soldiers swarm away, that one blue eyed, quaking soldier vanishing into the endless crowds of black and brown. The docks empty as crowded trains full of exhausted, scarred young men pull away from Weymouth station. 

The air stills, finally, and Collins looks up the cloudless starry sky, the noise of the town continuing in the background late into the night. A figure appears, dark red wool and golden blond hair shining in the moonlight. He sits on a crate next to Collins, saying nothing. 

Collins decides to break the silence. “Thank you. For- before. Saving me.” 

Peter smiles, almost nervously, but Collins returns his stare reassuringly. “I almost didn't.” Peter admits, “I didn't see your parachute, and- and I thought going after you wasn't worth it. I'm sorry.” 

“Don't be sorry. I'm here now, and you're right, there was no chute. You're clever, really, it's important to know when to take a risk and when not to.” Collins was aware he wasn't making much sense, but the young man beside him seemed to accept his explanation. 

Peter shifts on his crate. “I'm glad we took that risk,” he said quietly, looking over and up at him.

Collins returns his stare, and a heartbeat passes in silence, nothing but cool air in the space between their shoulders, their faces, their lips. 

Collins recoils from the thought, sniffing hard and looking away. “I have to- I have to go back. Report in. They’ll think i'm M.I.A. otherwise.”

“They'll send you out again. Back to Dunkirk?” Peter’s voice was barely audible.

Collins sighed. “Yes. Maybe, maybe not Dunkirk. If Hitler really intends to cross the channel, every last man will be needed to protect our home.” Belatedly, he realises he sounds exactly like one of the cheesy posters advertising enlistment. 

Peter doesn't seem to mind. “When will you go?” he asks, the faint words misting in the air in front of him. Collins felt a twinge of annoyance. It was June, and June had no right to be this cold, even if it was the middle of the night. Collins took a deep breath, meeting Peter’s blue, blue eyes again. He stood up. 

“Now.” he said, an air of finality around his words. “England needs me,” he added, only half joking. 

Peter stood too, and, at his full height, was barely shorter than Collins, with the sort of ganglyness that came with having just grown into the length of his arms and legs. “Stay.” he says, and Collins looks at him in surprise at the note of warmth, promise in his voice. Peter meets his eyes, holds his gaze bravely. “Go tomorrow morning. You can stay with us tonight.”

And so, Collins does.

**Author's Note:**

> um?? come and scream at me about dunkirk on tumblr: sadabernathy.tumblr.com  
> i think we need to decide on fanon names for the dunkirk characters without first/last/any names lol


End file.
